Sharing Experiences by Rylea

Sharing Experiences by Rylea - December 2016 Scholarship Essay

Throughout my years in high school I have done many papers, an assortment of tests, and multiple projects. There was one I did that stuck out more than the rest; that one I am very proud to say I did.
In a government class Sophomore year, we were told we were going to do a Civic Engagement project. The project was one we could do with another partner. The two partners were told to pick a local issue we were interested in, to research it, and make a presentation on it. In addition to that, we had to find a local organization that helped out with the issue of our interest and volunteer there for a day.
The issue with poverty and kids’ hunger was really tugging on my partner and my heart, so we decided to do that for our project. We researched a lot of information about the local kids in our area and found out there were a lot more struggles for kids to get meals every day than we thought. These are kids who go home wondering if they are going to be able to eat that night or if they have to wait for the next school day. We found a ton of statistics to add to our project, but knew statistics couldn’t be the only thing.
After we researched everything, we found an organization called Kids Food Basket. Kids Food Basket is an organization that makes sack lunches for students who don’ have enough money for food to bring home and eat for supper. My partner and I volunteered in packing up some of those sack meals and walked around their facility to learn more about them. Another great thing about their organization is that they decorate all of the sack lunch bags that they send out, so they provide kids with a meal and a smile.
The final part to our project was presenting it in front of some judges. The judges included parents of students and people from other organizations. Our presentation went smoothly and many people were intrigued afterwards, which was the whole point of our presentation. The purpose to all of this hard work was to get the word out about our issue and to explain what people can do about it. I am very proud of this because we accomplished our purpose and have many opportunities to share what we learned still today.